Spirit and Bonus Armor on Personal Loot

Community Manager Lore has made a post explaining changes related to personal loot for tanks and healers:

Blizzard

Both Spirit and Bonus Armor are intended to help restrict the number of people in a given raid who may be interested in a particular item. The OP makes a perfect argument as to why we want that distinction: he wanted the Blackiron Micro Crucible, but had resigned himself to only really having a shot at it from a bonus roll or a cache as there were so many others in his raid group who wanted it too. That's a crappy situation.

Bonus Armor is currently working well for creating that distinction. DPS specializations don't get anything from it, but it's far and away the best stat for tanks -- so much so that tanks will nearly always prefer an item that grants Bonus Armor over an item that doesn't, even if the item with no Bonus Armor is much higher in item level.

Prior to 6.1, we were getting a ton of feedback from tanks who were extremely disappointed to receive trinkets, rings, etc. with no Bonus Armor through their bonus rolls. It felt like a waste of a seal or cache to get something that your loot spec would realistically never equip. Plus, it's a bit of a false lead for inexperienced players; if Blizzard gave me a higher item level crit/multistrike amulet via bonus rolls, it must be an upgrade, right?

We got similar feedback from many healers, which caused us to take a look at how Spirit was functioning. Ultimately, we want Spirit to work similarly: a stat that's so good, you want it everywhere you can get it. If that's not the case for you, we'd like to fix that by making Spirit more attractive, not by making you want to equip non-Spirit items (and fight with half your raid over them).

We made some changes along those lines in 6.1 (such as the Mistweaver changes to Mana Tea). We feel that, with those changes, we're now in a position now where healers should always prefer Spirit pieces in the ring, neck, and back slots. The nature of trinkets makes them a little less cut-and-dry: in the vast majority of situations, you should prefer the Spirit trinket, but there could conceivably be a situation in which a DPS trinket would give better performance. We're still discussing what (if any) changes would need to be made to prevent those niche occurrences, but again, our goal is that you don't want the DPS trinkets.

TOKEN_REDEEM_GAME_TIME_DESCRIPTION_MINUTES:: Adds 2700 minutes of game time to this World of Warcraft account.

Changes:

TOKEN_CONFIRM_GAME_TIME_DESCRIPTION:: %d30 days of game time will be added to your World of Warcraft account. This game time is nonrefundable.

TOKEN_COMPLETE_GAME_TIME_DESCRIPTION:: %d30 days of game time will be added to your World of Warcraft account. You will receive a confirmation email shortly.

TOKEN_REDEEM_GAME_TIME_DESCRIPTION:: Adds %d30 days of game time to this World of Warcraft account.

TOKEN_REDEEM_GAME_TIME_BUTTON_LABEL:: %d30 Days of Game Time

GlueStrings:

New:

ACCOUNT_REACTIVATE_LOGOUT_NOTICE:: You will be logged out of the game when this transaction completes.

ACCOUNT_REACTIVATE_GOLD_REMAINING:: Gold Remaining: |cffffffff%s|r

TOKEN_PRICE_LOCK_EXPIRE:: Expires in %d sec

NPC Abilities

Защита: Throws a shield on the ground, reducing damage taken by most allies within 7 yards by 99%90%.

The 6.1.2 patch notes are here, and they are quite short:

Blizzard

Introducing the WoW Token

Coming soon to an Azeroth near you: the WoW Token, a new in-game item that allows players to simply and securely exchange gold and game time between each other.

Players will be able to purchase a WoW Token through the in-game Shop for real money, and then sell it on the Auction House for gold at the current market price. When a player buys a WoW Token from the Auction House for gold, the Token becomes Soulbound, and the player can then redeem it for 30 days of game time.

The WoW Token feature will be enabled at a future date. Patch 6.1.2 adds in the framework needed for the WoW Token feature in the game client and is not active at this time. In the meantime, check out this FAQ for details on how the feature works.

Комментарии

Комментарий от Trudatronix

Комментарий от cordell9

on 2015-03-05T19:55:58-06:00

Please tell me this PTR cycle will be shorter than the last one

Комментарий от furrymammoth

on 2015-03-05T19:56:55-06:00

I am really interested in seeing how much money this costs, and how much gold it will cost. My guess is either they will set up a minimum gold cost of this, which we will see almost immediately, and it will probably be around 10000 gold, or there will be no gold limit to the cost, and a month of game time will quickly go down to a very low cost.

I doubt the latter. We're talking about an alternative to giving Blizzard money here, so at the very least, I assume they will make you work for it, even if the supply is huge.

Комментарий от tresrottn

on 2015-03-05T20:08:11-06:00

Blizzard is setting the price and if it's only 10k gold, it's not worth it.

Комментарий от oliviadgrace

on 2015-03-05T20:12:57-06:00

As noted, we're pretty confident that the 100g gold price in these PTR images is for testing. Blizzard wants players to be able to test it, and this price allows them to do so. As we said in our previous article on the token, it seems more likely that it'll be in the thousands of gold on live servers.

Комментарий от Bowtome

on 2015-03-05T20:16:52-06:00

Its to try to fight gold farmers in a way. I figure there will be gold cap between 15k min 30k max . That being said the price range will value some where between that. for $17 you can buy 20k gold that depending on server and site as well

Комментарий от DaltonImperial

on 2015-03-05T23:11:23-06:00

Not sure if this is possible on the PTR, but have you been able to see how a Lapsed Account would be able to buy a token, as was suggested in the Venturebeat interview?

Комментарий от PragmaticSoul

on 2015-03-06T00:04:28-06:00

I'd very much like to get in on this money-for-gold thing. There's lots of things I'd like to buy (e.g., upgrading all my heirlooms to 1-100, getting the Expedition Yak, getting all the Voltron jewel mounts) that doesn't depend on the economy.

The influx of all this gold (from people obsessed with hitting gold cap, who now have something worthwhile to spend it on), however, might cause inflation on stuff on the auction house (e.g., buying raid-drop pets could become prohibitive UNLESS you're selling off tokens right and left, sigh...).

Комментарий от Interest

on 2015-03-06T00:20:34-06:00

Not sure if this is possible on the PTR, but have you been able to see how a Lapsed Account would be able to buy a token, as was suggested in the Venturebeat interview?

I'm really hoping so... I can activate my other account that way!

(Also it would be a little lame if you couldn't. In a way it would make the system illogical because to buy sub tokens you need to activate a sub...)

Комментарий от Czips

on 2015-03-06T02:19:56-06:00

Little question here. It will be possible to aquire token if account is frozen to make da account you know, active by using token? Cheers ;)

Комментарий от billymm

on 2015-03-06T03:03:44-06:00

I like the game token idea but I think AH prices will go crazy for a bit. I think the tokens will cost somewhere from 40-50k gold

Комментарий от naruna

on 2015-03-06T03:18:54-06:00

if the token gets anything over 30k gold than it's not worth it....as u can buy 2months game card for 60k from sellers now...

Комментарий от unholydriver

on 2015-03-06T04:13:46-06:00

I just wanted to say that I'm really impressed and happy Blizz is doing this. It's a bit weird to see so many negative-ish comments in general but welcome to the internet, I guess.

Комментарий от DarthEnder

on 2015-03-06T04:30:05-06:00

I wonder if there's any chance we'll ever be able to spend WoW tokens for things from the Blizzard store besides game time.

I would love to be able to buy the store pets or mounts without having to spend any real money.

Комментарий от Mantrhax

on 2015-03-06T05:23:51-06:00

Probably will be like 100k gold

Комментарий от Grim32

on 2015-03-06T05:50:22-06:00

To be competitive (at current rate) against gold sellers, it will have to cost roughly 20k. Otherwise people will still buy gold to buy this time to save some cash.

If the cost goes too high - gold sellers will still be the preferable option for those players who want easy gold. If the cost goes too low, people will still go to the gold sellers to get cheaper game time than buying an actual month.

But the above figure (20k) is a middle ground for Game time - meaning it is not worth any more or less than going to the gold sellers.

Комментарий от Strafer

on 2015-03-06T06:02:50-06:00

What? Gametime until 2038? :D

Комментарий от LyssaWoW

on 2015-03-06T06:08:46-06:00

I wonder if there's any chance we'll ever be able to spend WoW tokens for things from the Blizzard store besides game time.

I would love to be able to buy the store pets or mounts without having to spend any real money.

This would be a nice idea if WoW wasn't a subscription based game. Cash shops, and the grind for the currency to avoid real money transactions, are for free-to-play. The point of a subscription fee is it gives you access to the whole game, not some of it then "here's some nice mounts we made that used to be what we made into achievement/drop items in the game, that you can now pay extra for".

I'm not ranting, I'm all for this token-for-game-time idea, it will definitely make people think twice before going to shady sites to hand over their credit card details to some random person in somewhere beginning with Chi and ending in na ;)

Комментарий от Sas148

on 2015-03-06T06:52:22-06:00

Little question here. It will be possible to aquire token if account is frozen to make da account you know, active by using token? Cheers ;)

Yes. Accounts with enough gold to purchase a token will be eligible to do so thereby reactivating the account.

To be competitive (at current rate) against gold sellers, it will have to cost roughly 20k. Otherwise people will still buy gold to buy this time to save some cash.

If the cost goes too high - gold sellers will still be the preferable option for those players who want easy gold. If the cost goes too low, people will still go to the gold sellers to get cheaper game time than buying an actual month.

But the above figure (20k) is a middle ground for Game time - meaning it is not worth any more or less than going to the gold sellers.

The value in purchasing something that may cost more in gold is the security associated with it. No longer will credit card information have to be provided to shady gold-selling sites nor will the transaction itself be against the Terms of Use resulting in a possible forfeit of the account and all progress associated with it.